Tell me what it felt

to be up there tonight.

Well, for one thing, I thought, my God, this opening number.

I hope I don't win this because that's an impossible act to follow.

Literally, I was hoping, geez, I don't know whether I can pull off a speech after that.

What does it mean to you to come back to Broadway and be embraced by Tony voters this year?

It's extremely special.

You know, when you're away for, it's been five or six years since I worked with Joe Mantello and Laurie Metcalf and Hillary and Clinton.

Yeah.

Uh, if you go back and read Roald Dahl for children, you'll see his writing has a real dark side.

He had a real dark side himself.

It, it's, it's a sort of deep dive into Roald Dahl and English antisemitism.

He, he did have that streak in him.

Oof.

And it's a kind of, uh, rumination on bigotry and cruelty, really, and it's a fascinating part to play because he was a, a, uh, of course, an enormously intelligent, witty, charming man.

Can you just take us through how you, how you came to be involved? And also, I really wanna underscore when, if you can break down the dates, 'cause it kind of is, uh, unbelievable the timing of all this.

The whole, the whole experience has been, uh, unbelievable.

I...

Yes, Nick is an old friend, uh, starting with Sweet Smell of Success.

We even knew each other before then a little bit.

But, uh, that was not a suc- By any conventional definition, that was not a success, but it f- was a fantastic experience for me, a first time on, on, in a musical on Broadway, and working with an extraordinary team of people.We, and my friendship with, with Nick was the best thing to come out of it.

We, we have stayed just as good friends over the years.

This is 2023?

Yep

...

when there have been two Israeli incursions into Lebanon within the last two years.

I- i- you, you hear the dialogue and you think, "This is not 1982.

It's about right now."

Yeah.

A lot of it you learn about from the play.

And it's like a meditation on cruelty, hatefulness, bigotry, and antisemitism.

And he did have a, a hard life in a lot of ways, right?

Well, that was my way in.

Uh, he had a very hard life.

There's several elements.

You know, when you ask yourself, "What makes him hate like that?" Um, the, the various clues I found had to do with his upbringing and his experiences.

He was born a Norwegian of a Norwegian family, but that family lived in Wales.

His father had been brought to Cardiff to work in the shipping industry.

... one of the things I read is that you, you placed little balls of some material in your, the jowls of your cheeks to give you that ra, ra, ra, ra, that thing going, or what?

And he did have a, a hard life in a lot of ways, right?

Well, that was my way in.

Uh, he had a very hard life.

There are several elements.

You know, when you ask yourself, "What makes him hate like that?" Um, the, the various clues I found had to do with his upbringing and his experiences.

He was born a Norwegian of a Norwegian family, but that family lived in Wales.

His father had been brought to Cardiff to work in the shipping industry.

W- what do you like about entertaining kids?

Is it easier to be on some... on a sitcom than it is to be, you know, in a two-and-a-half-hour play where, where the, the, the mood is anything but, um, uh, jovial at all moments?

Well, on a very basic level, it's exactly the same process.

Uh, just all the logistics are very different.

It, it was a glorious, fun six years doing that show.

I led a very normal life.

I worked from ten until four, except on Tuesdays when we performed the show at night.

I was working hand in glove with this incredible t-team of a dozen plus comedy writers and with this effortless ensemble of, of comic actors, most of them from the stage, and we had a live audience.

Tell me a little bit about that.

What is it, what is it about?

Well, uh, it, it, lots of people know Roald Dahl's writing.

Uh, you know he has his, his dark side as a writer.

Well, he had his dark side as a human being.

Uh, a man of great charm, great wit and intelligence, but a streak of witting and unwitting cruelty that he'd, uh...

Curiously, not so curiously, he, he had a streak of anti-Semitism, which is very much what the play is about.

It's a piece of history.

That's right.

Now, I want you to make sure your phones are on silent, please.

I guess maybe I should do that.

Wouldn't that be mortifying?

(instrumental music) What does it mean to be a storyteller?

So much of telling the story of emotions happens in the face.

That's why the closeup is what practically defines movie-making.

(instrumental music) That's what you do as a photographer.

A sudden moment of cheerfulness descending into, uh-oh, downtime.

Mm-hmm.

And I just, uh, went to, to, to work at it. I, I found, you know, the most interesting thing I did in all my research, uh, what I found was reading all about him as a child and as a boy and as a young man. Uh, tremendously insecure, growing up a failure with very neglectful parents, and, uh, just feeling like a screw-up, like there had, had been so many expectations of him that he would... so that so many things in his life were pure overcompensation. So you approach your old age, and to me, all the characteristics you had in childhood kick in. That, I sort of worked from that.

Cool it, Sean.

... 15 (laughs), yeah, 15 were, uh, players and we, at, at a certain point, we stripped completely naked, got our uniforms on, off into, we played the match, then came back at the end. Halfway through, my character, the one, uh, there was a scene that won me that Tony Award. I was brought, uh, off the pitch halfway through the match covered in mu- mud and very, very badly injured. Smashed nose, blood running down my face. I was taken off stage to an off-stage bathtub, scrubbed all the mud off and was brought-... back on stage by the equipment manager. I was stark naked and wet and glistening. I, he toweled me down and dressed me up like I was a baby. The on- a long scene in silence. All you heard was the sound of the crowd roaring offstage. And at a certain point, he hoisted me to my feet and hauled my underpants up.